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Top-secret Android handset surfaces on YouTube

A rare moment of openness for Google's open OS

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Defying Google's pathologically closed approach to its open mobile platform, someone has posted video of a top-secret Android phone to YouTube.

The video's a bit blurry. And even if it wasn't, it wouldn't tell you much. But if you want a glimpse of the current Android SDK, this is the only way to get it. For more than five months, in a display of perverse cruelty, Google has hidden SDK updates from all but a select few mobile developers.

Apparently, this is the HTC Dream - an Android handset under development at Taiwenese-based manufacturer High Tech Computer. Word is that this will be the first Android device to market sometime later this year.

When he demoed Android at Google's San Francisco developer conference in late May, engineering director Steve Horowitz was likely handling an earlier version of the Dream. You can see it on YouTube too.

The newer video shows off a retractable keyboard. But more importantly, it shows off some rogue developer breaking Google's strict code of secrecy. ®